


Auld Acquaintance Not Forgot

by babykid528



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Al Calavicci/Beth Calavicci - Freeform, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol as a Coping Mechanism, Best Friends, Christmas Eve, Fix-It, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Missing Scene, Post-Series, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 18:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykid528/pseuds/babykid528
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Al met for the first time on Christmas eve. They re-met then too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Auld Acquaintance Not Forgot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashcat/gifts).



> Dear recipient, 
> 
> A very merry yuletide to you! I was perusing through the fandom requests spreadsheet and saw you had requested my favorite show of all time, so I had to give your DYW letter a look. I was completely overwhelmed by feels when I saw your request/prompt ideas and I just had to write you this treat. I hope you enjoy it. <3
> 
> Special thanks to my good friend, I, for giving this a quick beta read for me.

Christmas was never a particularly good time of year for Al. Don’t get him wrong, he always wanted it to be. He loved the idea of it: the cheer, good will, and joy, plus the sweets and big, home-cooked meals. It was always a fiction for him though. Something he could never obtain: first, because of his mother’s absence; then, his father’s and his sister’s absences. He grew up lonely and unwanted, which was only made worse by the fact that he was surrounded by fellow lonely and unwanted kids.

 

He thought adulthood would change things. He expected self-sufficiency and relative success to make his life better. But he was taken prisoner during a war he never really wanted to fight in and he lost the love of his life, without even knowing it, while trying to stay alive. Returning to the United States, his life completely changed, was heartbreaking. Christmas, for him, just never became the celebrated holiday everyone else made it out to be.

 

He threw himself into his work, advancing amongst the ranks at a steady clip, while also throwing himself into the bottle. Four failed marriages later and years worth of liver damage found Al fighting a vending machine in the Starbright Project’s rec room during a drunken rage on Christmas Eve.

 

“I think the machine’s winning,” said a voice, breaking through Al’s fuzzy thoughts and loud, slurred tirade.

 

He turned unfocused eyes to the figure of a man standing in the rec room doorway. The guy was young. Al recognized him as one of the new hires for the project. He’d never really talked to the kid before tonight, but Al knew he had a reputation for extreme friendliness.

 

“Leave me alone,” Al snapped.

 

The kid entered the room, hands in his pockets, and leisurely approached Al.

 

“I don’t think that’s actually a good idea right now, Admiral,” he said.

 

“Just go away,” Al told him again.

 

The kid continued his approach until he was beside Al. Without another word, he reached into the machine and took out the candy bar Al had attempted to purchase and held it out to him. Al had been sure that the candy hadn’t fallen, which is what had prompted him to attack the machine to begin with.

 

“Where’d that come from?” he asked.

 

The kid motioned toward the drawer on the machine, “You bought it.”

 

Al snatched it out of his hand.

 

“Who the hell are you anyway,” Al asked, clumsily fumbling to rip open the candy.

 

“My name’s Sam,” he said, “Sam Beckett.”

 

“What do you want, Sam Beckett?” Al asked.

 

“I was just heading out to get some dinner at the diner down the road,” Sam told him, tilting his head. (At least Al thought he was tilting his head. It’s possible Al was the one tilting.)

 

“You decided to stick your nose in my business first?” Al asked, mouth full of candy.

 

“I thought I’d see if you wanted to come join me, actually,” Sam said. “My treat.”

 

Al narrowed his eyes at the kid, this stranger, who was asking him to eat with him. He didn’t particularly want company and he was just about to say so, except, it would have been a lie. All Al wanted was company. He just didn’t know where to find it.

 

Al stopped himself from cursing the guy out and telling him to scram and, instead, he nodded jerkily.

 

“Okay.”

 

Sam smiled then and reached out to gently squeeze Al’s shoulder.

 

“Excellent,” he said, and he ushered them to his car.

 

It was the first of many meals the two would share. More importantly, it was the first of many smiles that Sam would bestow on Al. And, while Al’s memory of it was blurry at best, that first smile would still stick with him for the rest of his life, as clear as the day he witnessed it.

 

***

 

“Albert!” Sam’s merry exclamation and cheery grin triggered an automatic response in Al: he laughed before realizing he was also smiling, and pulled Sam into a tight hug.

 

They’d just finished their research proposal for Project Quantum Leap, a project that had been in the making for almost twenty years for Sam. It was all up to the committee now, whether they would receive any funding.

 

Sam, ever the optimist, was celebrating an early victory with a giant, Christmas Eve party.

 

Al reached out and grabbed Sam’s drink when the hug ended and took a swig of it.

 

“You’re going to jinx us with this party,” Al told him, trying his best to sound admonishing but failing. “Now the committee is never going to approve our funding.”

 

Sam just waved him off. “They’re going to throw money at us, Al.”

 

“The government doesn’t ‘throw money’ at anything,” Al pointed out.

 

Sam looked as if he was determined to ignore Al’s realism. “At any rate,” he said, “It’s Christmas Eve! That’s cause for celebration enough!”

 

Al huffed. “You know how well I deal with Christmas.”

 

Sam wrapped his arm around Al’s shoulders and pulled him close to his side.

 

“Forget Christmas.” He said, softly, “Happy Anniversary.”

 

Sam planted a kiss on Al’s temple then, wet and sloppy.

 

Al couldn’t fight the laugh that bubbled up out of his chest.

 

“Anniversary?”

 

“Yeah,” Sam’s smile morphed and he suddenly somehow looked a decade younger. “We met on Christmas Eve in 1981. We saved one another that night.”

 

Al’s smile grew bewildered at that.

 

“I saved you?” he asked. He knew the ways Sam had saved him, but he had no idea how he’d saved Sam.

 

Sam nodded, tightly, “You saved me from spending another Christmas Eve alone, beating myself up for my shortcomings as a son and brother.”

 

The two men stood quietly then, looking at one another with soft, thoughtful expressions.

 

“Well,” Al said, clearing the tightness from his throat, “that is a cause for celebration then.”

 

He took another sip of Sam’s drink before toasting him, “Happy Anniversary, Sam.”

 

Sam smiled, pleased, and took his drink back before echoing the same sentiment back at Al. When the moment passed, Sam grabbed Al’s arm and dragged him back to the rest of the party.

 

***

 

It was over a decade after their first meeting when Al found himself celebrating his first Christmas without Sam.

 

Sam, the dumbest genius Al had ever met, who stepped into an accelerator chamber before it was ready and vanished in Time.

 

It took all the effort Al could muster to get out of his apartment that Christmas Eve morning, to make a run for the essentials: milk, eggs, and whiskey. It wasn’t long after he returned home that he was drunk.

 

He hadn’t had that kind of relationship with alcohol since the first night he met Sam. He knew Sam would be disappointed if he could see Al drinking like that again, but Sam couldn’t see him, not outside of the imaging chamber. Al had never before been simultaneously so grateful for and depressed by a single thought.

 

He missed Sam, missed his best friend, missed the only family he’d ever been able to keep around him for more than a couple of years. Sam was the only relationship he ever had that hadn’t ended in betrayal and a Texas-sized hangover.

 

While his relationship with Sam certainly wasn’t over, that didn’t mean he couldn’t work on the hangover anyway. He could practice it for the day when he finally would be willing to accept that Sam may never be coming home.

 

He poured a few more fingers of whiskey into his glass at that thought. He was going to pay for this pity party tomorrow, but he’d do what he needed to get through the night.

 

***

 

Sam didn’t come home.

 

Not the next year. Not the year after that. Or the one after that. Or after that…

 

Al got Beth back, but lost Sam entirely.

 

He shouldn’t remember that. He shouldn’t have memories that his timeline had changed. That Sam changed it. Hell, he shouldn’t even remember who Sam was.

 

Without losing Beth, he should never have joined Starbright. Except he remembered everything from the reality where he lost her. He remembered Starbright and Quantum Leap. He remembered meeting that man with that smile and losing him to time. He remembered. Everything.

 

It was weird and somewhat disorienting, having two lives in his head. Both of which he’d lived. Ziggy thought Al might have been able to retain both sets of memories because he switched places with Sam during that one leap. Al didn’t know if that was the reason or if Fate had just intervened to prevent the world-ending paradox that surely would have occurred if Project Quantum Leap never came into existence just because Al came home to Beth after Nam.

 

So, he came home to Beth and he joined Starbright anyway. He wasn’t drunk when he met Sam, in this new reality, but he did still have dinner with Sam on Christmas Eve.

 

Al had dinner with Sam _every_ Christmas Eve, much to Beth’s dismay.

 

It was kind of ironic. Al was happier in the new reality, the second one. Sam knew he would be, that was the whole purpose of him changing life so Al could be with Beth after the war. But Sam hadn’t known the kind of strain Al’s relationship with Sam would have put on Al’s relationship with Beth.

 

In the end, Sam got himself lost in Time in order to preserve Al’s first marriage only to have that marriage fall apart because Al spent all his time with Sam instead of his wife.

 

It was at least amicable when the split came, after Quantum Leap was up and running in the second reality. Beth still cared for him and Al certainly still cared for her, but Sam was Al’s family and Beth was exhausted from trying to compete with that.

 

“I can’t win against your soul mate,” she told him, smiling sadly.

 

A part of Al wanted to sputter and protest, deny such a ludicrous, preposterous assertion. _Sam? His soul mate? Ha!_

 

A bigger part of Al, however, knew Beth was right.

 

It was no one’s fault, really. There was no one to blame. But Beth left him and Al ended up alone again, just like in the first reality, waiting for Sam to return.

 

***

 

Quantum Leap lost its funding and Sam was still missing. He was still missing the year after the project closed, and the year after that, and the one after that.

 

It was a sad, lonely ritual, but Al still went to the site every Christmas Eve. It was still there, in the desert, locked down and unused. The government wanted to demolish the space, but a team of excellent attorneys managed to preserve it as an historical landmark. Al didn’t know how they pulled it off, he just knew he’d be eternally grateful that they did.

 

Al was convinced, even without Ziggy to help him, that Sam would come back, at that very spot. It was where he left, so it stood to reason it was where he’d return.

 

And Al wanted to be there when Sam did return.

 

So, like clockwork, Al drove to the site, nearly thirty years after first meeting Sam in both the timelines in his head, older than Sam had ever seen him. He pulled up to the site and snuck inside, his old body creaking almost as much as the door. Then, he sat and waited.

 

In years past, he had stayed through the night, until the late morning, always disappointed when Sam didn’t show up, but never discouraged. Because he knew that one day, someday soon, he knew Sam would come home. He knew it deep down in his bones.

 

“Al?”

 

His breath caught as the sound of his name ripped through his hopeful thoughts. He turned around wide-eyed, trying to see in the dark room, past the shadows.

 

“Al!”

 

He was enveloped in strong arms and familiar musky scent before his eyes could adjust. He knew the chest pressed to his. He knew the man crushing him in his embrace.

 

“Sam, I’ve been waiting for you for so long,” Al told him, voice wrecked.

 

He scrambled to wrap his arms around Sam. He dug his fingers into Sam’s back. He fought back a sob, unsuccessfully.

 

“I stayed away,” Sam said, “How’s Beth?”

 

“She left me,” Al told him, “Because I spent all my time with you and waiting for you.”

 

Sam let out a mix between a sob and a laugh.

 

“I waited for so long,” Al repeated.

 

“I know,” Sam said, “me too.”

 

Neither of them would have to wait any longer.


End file.
